John Norton | Visual Artist

I have lived in Belmont for over 20 years, and was part of the group of artists who worked at the Kendall Center for the Arts that was destroyed by fire in 1999. As the Zen poet wrote, “Barn's burnt down, now I can see the moon.” And so I began to work smaller, a little less predictably. It has led me to explore the possibilities of discarded or rediscovered materials for about a decade.

As always, I work for pleasure and see where the winds blow. My recent mixed-media pieces are smaller and more three-dimensional than my previous artwork that focused on more literal scenes from nature. I like the ambiguity that exists when abstract forms, shapes, and textures, loosely drawn from the natural world, come together and create a new energy, a new imaginary landscape. It has its own scale, its own order.

I have shown my work in New Mexico, Maine, and most recently here in the Boston area. I have also taught drawing/painting and design at Buckingham Browne & Nichols School in Cambridge, where I was the chair of the Arts department, and at Haystack School of Crafts in Maine.